Lake Guerrero, Mexico

[spud3700]

Anyone have any recent experience on Lake Guerrero, Mexico?

I will be there next Monday and looking for any information you have.

If not, i will provide it when I return

Thanks

Spud

[Redlinerobert]

No experience there, but I am looking forward to your report!

[spud3700]

Sorry for the late update, but here it is.  I spent 4 days fishing with my 15 yeart old son, his friend and my brother in law.

Just the facts

Day 1 - 19 fish including a 10lb 10 oz (26 in ling, 28 in girth) and a 7lb 2 oz

Day 2 - 30 fish including a 4lb 10 oz

Day 3 - 38 fish including a 4 lb 5 oz

Day 4 - 50 fish, including

            7lb 5oz

            6lb 5oz

            3lb 10oz

             4lb 6oz

             4lb 5oz

             5lb 7oz

             

I mostly fish Northern and Walleye up north, so this was a learning experience for me.  Lake Guerrero has about 95,000 acres of water, so we covered a small portion only.

Day one in invited our guide to fish and watched his technique.   This helped speed up my learning curve quite a bit.  The setup that worked best for me was a 7ft St Croix med heavy fast rod with a Calcutta 250 TE DC reel spooled with 30lb power pro (8lb diameter).  The heavy line is needed as you are fishing in trees and rocks and the line takes a beating.  There is no weed growth.  The bottom is rock and stone.  The tops of trees stick up out of the water and we fished these like a weed bed.  Smaller fish inside the tree line and the larger ones on the edges.  I used a #3 offset hook with 2 yellow beads between the hook and the bullet weight.  8 inch plastic lizards and trick worms worked best.  I also stained the tails with Chartruese spike it.  We tries some top water early in the morning and caught a few, but jiggins with plastic worked the best.

Most of the fish caught were 1 lb or so.  This was disappointing, althought I knew we were going post spawn.  I also knew Guerrero has a reputation for being past its prime, bgut it is easy to get to and the price was reasonable.  El Salto, Huites and Backarach (sp?) have a better rep but are difficult to get to from Chicago.  Prior to this trip the largest Bass I ever caught was 2 lbs, so the 10 big ones I did land were a kick.

We stayed at Las Palmas 2000.  The facilities, food and service were excellent.  The owner, Ramiro, runs a great operation.

If I cannot get a trip to the western lakes, I might try Guerrero in Jan or Feb.

BTW, my son and his friend each caught a 4 and 5 pounder, my borther in law landed a 3 pounder.  He is a fairly experienced fisherman with more time on the water than I have, but it was just one of those times when the fish were at my end of the boat.

[Guest Bountiful_Waters]

Just like any stateside lake, Mexican lakes can be slow at times. Don't get frustrated. Getting to El Salto is actually very easy compared to some of the othe lakes. I hate changing planes in Mexico, would rather change in the U.S. . I am particular about fishing Mexican lakes at their low levels from May-July. Once your on big fish, you stand to wear yourself out. Time on the water is key, give these Mexican lakes a chance. I go more for the great service now more than anything. If I catch a big fish, that's just icing on the cake. Shoot me a PM sometime and I will give you a little more hands on opinion.

[Uncle Leo]

I fished there last March. Las Palmas is A1 in my book. Great fishing also our best day we stopped counting at 92 which was by lunch. Probably 150 for the day. Lots of 4 lber's. Biggest for our group of 4 was 10 lb 9 oz. Texas rigged lizards was the only thing that worked.

[SPAZ]

Here is my review from last month..

This was by far a tougher trip than Comedero. I will start out by saying that topwater on this trip during morning or night wasn't happening. Nothing on topwater even though I was consistently trying to use poppers on the 1st and 2nd day. I went with my brother and our guide told us that pretty much all the bass have already spawned. This trip made me realize how much more I need to learn as a fisherman.

The first day of fishing I saw one of my compile-x's break and our biggest fish we caught was a 3.5 lb. Now I've only pitched and flipped in very limited situations and to be honest about 80% of the fishing needed to be this way. We both caught a total of 24 the first day. We were using chart/white spinner baits and 8" watermelon red worms.

The 2nd day was really tough We ended up catching about 15 fish this day. We just couldn't figure out how to make the fish bite. I actually gave my set up to the guide to show us how to do it and right away the guy caught 2 fish on 2 casts. These guys know how to fish their lakes. Even when he showed us how he was using the texas rig for some reason I was still having a hard time. I did end up getting some confidence using the swim senko and trick worm on this day though. Spinnerbaits were just not working this day. Only 1 fish caught on a spinner bait this day. Nothing big to write home about. Back in camp we decided to move away from using straight braid and move over to fluorocarbon. My brother went to the Trilene 20lb(very good line btw) and I ended up going with the 17lb xps fluro. 17lb wasn't enough on this lake.

3rd day we started off fishing the dam. At this point we were both disappointed. We set our goals to catch at least 1 5lber on the trip and this lake wasn't having that. I just wanted my brother to catch something of size because at least I caught some good ones out in Comedero. I started throwing a spinner bait and lipless crank early in the morning and not even 1 bite. I ended up giving up on that and moved over to plastics back when I saw my brother catching fish on trick worms and lizards. I started with watermelon red trick worms and my brother with watermelon trick worms, all plastics were spiked with chartreuse spike it. On this day the plastics were working and we were actually consistently catching fish all day. I was slowly crawling the baits and my brother was hopping them. During the morning session my brother finally got a nice bass on the trick worm. He ended up catching a 7lb bass. About 10 min later he lost a really good fish, the line snapped while fighting the fish. This made our trip right there seeing him catch a big one finally.(7lb is big for Chicago fishermen). Granted, the conditions were better than the first two days but I truly believe moving to the fluorocarbon line and also increasing the weights of our rigs from 1/4oz to 3/8oz made the difference. The additional weight was definitely most beneficial when flipping into the trees. It took us a while but we finally started learning how to catch these fish. I did well this day using a Reaction Innovations dominator, Death adder, trick worm, and the swim senko. I was really impressed with the action of the swim senko. Definitely a solid plastic and that tail has such great movement. During the afternoon session I started throwing DD22's and fat free shads in 30ft of water, tried it for 30 min but it wasn't working out. Finally 10 min before we had to leave I threw a 6" watermelon red lizard in about 12 feet of water and finally caught my first quality fish a nice 7lber. The wind started pick up a lot and we ended up calling it for the day and trip.

I learned a lot on this trip and I definitely want to head back to this lake now that I have an understanding of how to fish it. We stayed at Las Palmas 2000 lodge. The food was really good and they even had a swimming pool, free wifi internet and satellite tv(hbo/cinemax/showtime). I definitely recommend this place.

[Uncle Leo]

Will be there over the Memorial Day Weekend. Anyone have any idea how the fishing has been?